My Friend the Piano (Hardcover)

A girl discovers the piano and starts composing in this entry from Cowan (My Life With the Wave), a very loose adaptation of a story by Anibal Menterio Machado. Although the piano and the girl are clearly soul mates, what is music to the girl's ears is poison to her mother's: "That is not playing. It's noise." The mother orders lessons, but both girl and piano balk at the routine and the stifling of their creativity. The practice sessions are fiat or sharp or atonal, never fun or successful. When it looks as if a grandmother is going to come to live with them, the mother puts the piano up for sale, but it misbehaves for prospective buyers. Indeed, the piano, as a piano, can't be given away; the woman who claims it plans to turn it into stripped and painted storage. The piano literally bristles at this outrage; Hawkes has ably and elegantly shaped the artwork for this book, in perfect concord with Cowan's words. In the process of delivering the piano - the girl and her father are rolling it to its fate - the instrument, with the girl on top, makes its escape into the wide blue sea (she jumps off at the last minute). The piano serenades the girl with symphonies carried to the shore on breezes from distant climes while she composes "for pots and pans," a musical undertaking that serves those wretched parents right. (Kirkus Reviews)

What child can resist a piano? Though the symphony pounded out by some young musicians may sound more like noise to adults, it will always be music to the kid who is playing it. My Friend the Piano takes a fresh and funny look at the differences between adult and child sensibilities.

General

Imprint:	William Morrow
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	June 1999
First published:	September 1998
Authors:	Catherine Cowan
Illustrators:	Kevin Hawkes
Dimensions:	290 x 245 x 9mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	32
ISBN-13:	978-0-688-13239-2
Categories:	Books > Children's & Educational > Fiction > General Books > Children's Fiction & Fun > General
LSN:	0-688-13239-1
Barcode:	9780688132392

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